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The People Coming to Power ! 



SPEECH 



WENDELL PHILLIPS, Esq., 



SALISBUEY BEACH GATHEEING, 



SEPTEMBER 13, 1871. 



* »»^ > 



^ 



BOSTON : 

LEE & SHEPAKD, 

1871. 



^ 



ADDRESS OF WENDELL PHILLIPS 

AT THE 

SALISBURY BEACH GATHERING, SEPT. 13, 1871. 



Fellow Citizens .-—General Butler told you this was a 
gathering, on the seaside, of all parties and all classes of 
men, and that he hoped his remarks would not offend 
the prejudices of any class or of any party. Gentlemen, 
I recognize, as he does, the duty we owe to the harmony 
of this occasion ; but if I thought, fellow-citizens, that I 
should leave Salisbury Beach without treading on some- 
body's toes, I should regret I ever came here. What is 
the use of a thousand men meeting together to compare 
notes — to exchange ideas one Avith the other — if we do 
not leave, after we separate, some hint, some seed, some 
suggestion, that will bear fruit— that will clear up the 
doubts, cut away the underbrush, and enable men to see 
clearer and act more nobly ? I came here on purpose to 
offend your prejudices ; I did not come for any other 
reason ; because, fellow-citizens, if you stood here, and I 
was one of the crowd now before me, I should hope that 
you would drop some salt, or endeavor to stir the waters 
of the public mind, for the health and life of us all. 



Gentlemen, I came down here to say something about 
the governor of Massachusetts that is to be. And in the 
first place, I did not come from any personal interest in 
the office. You know when Henry IV. of France came 
to a city in his dominions, the mayor said, "May it 
please your majesty, we have not fired any salute, for two 
reasons. In the first place, we have no cannon ; and in 
the second place, we have no powder." In like manner, 
there is one reason why I shall never be governor of 
Massachusetts, and that is because nobody will ever vote 
for me. Then there is another reason equally potent, 
which is, that if everybody in the State voted for me, I 
would not take the office. So I have no personal interest, 
as an individual, in the question of who is governor of 
Massachusetts. But, gentlemen, I have an interest in 
common with you, holding as we do the honor and the 
prosperity of the State very dear to us, and that is the 
reason I have come down here to-day. 

There has been a great deal of 'talk lately, and a great 
deal of writing in the newspapers, touching men who, it 
is said, have honored Massachusetts, within the last 
twenty years, by accepting the governor's chaii*. Now, 
to tell the truth, between me and you, in strict confi- 
dence, I have been living twenty years, and I have seen 
no such man. There was but one man before the Revo- 
lution who ever honored Massachusetts by being her 
governor, and that man was Sir Henry Vane. When 
that noble man, far-seeing statesman and generous patriot, 
who sealed his devotion to liberty on the scaflfold, — when 
he accepted the governor's chair of Massachusetts, he 
honored the State. And there has been one man since 
the Revolution who has honored the State by accepting 
her highest office, and only one. That man was Samuel 



Adams — old Sam Adams of Boston ; almost the only 
— certainly the ablest — statesman that Massachusetts lent 
to the Revolution. 

This is an old festival. It has been held for a century 
of more, and it is not out of place, therefore, to say a 
word of the far past. I say New England gave only 
three great men to the Revolution — marvellously great 
men. One was Benjamin Franklin, the second was 
Samuel Adams, and the third was Nathaniel Greene, of 
Rhode Island — the general that should have had prece- 
dence of Washington, if it had not been necessary then, 
as ever since, to pet the wayward and childish South in 
order to keep her on any decent level. These are the 
three great men that New England lent the Revolution, 
and there is no name in all our history that deserves to 
be named in the same week with these three. After 
them, at a long interval, comes your own Timothy Picker- 
ing, a pure, able statesman ; and by his side stands Jon- 
athan Trumbull of Connecticut — the man who gave rise 
to the phrase "Brother Jonathan " ; for when Washing- 
ton doubted what to do, it is said the wise old Virginian 
used to stop and say, " Ask Brother Jonathan^'' 

Gentlemen, within the last twenty years Massachusetts 
has conferred honor whenever she has conferred office. 
She has not received any. And I have to say, that 
among the worthy men whom for fifty years Massachu- 
setts has chosen to put into her governor's chair, there is 
not one that will do more credit to the State than he 
who has just left this platform, and to whose voice you 
have just listened. (Applause.) I know the long list 
of the governors ; I know all that can be said for Brooks, 
Briggs, Andrew, or any one else that may be your 
favorite ; but when history comes to record the great 



names and the great services Massachusetts has rendered 
to the nation and to the age, she will write the name of 
Benjamin F. Butler as high, if not higher, than any of 
those men who have filled the governor's chair for fifty 
years. I know what I assert; and though I do not 
choose to name any one of the long catalogue of candi- 
dates this year, yet I ask every one of you, no matter to 
what party you belong or what name you worship, Show 
me a name in that long list which has been oflfered for 
your votes this fall, show me one who represents an idea. 
Show me the man among these candidates who, if he 
died to-morrow, any great progressive idea or movement 
would lose a champion. You know, every one of you, 
that death, in its mysterious interposition, might sweep 
from the stage of human affairs all these worthy gentle- 
men, and the cause of humanity and progress would not 
be the poorer. 

They are good merchants ; they are good lawyers ; 
they are worthy men ; they will stand in the rank and 
file tall as anybody else ; but if any man here, familiar 
with the record, will tell me what service either of them 
has rendered, or even promises to render, to human 
progi'ess, I will be a most patient listener. The only 
value any public man has, in my eyes, is the aid he aims 
or is able to give toward lifting off the unnecessary bur- 
dens of society, remodelling what is unjust and remedy- 
ing what is defective, and raising the mass of mankind to 
greater comfort, wisdom and virtue. 

Gentlemen, I do not mean to attack any individual. I 
did not come here for any personal criticism. General 
Butler said, the other day — I think at Fitchburg — that 
when I had the misfortune to be candidate for the gov- 
ernor's chair last year, I let the papers run over me, but 



that he chose to fight. "Well, we have good authority, 
both of us, for the course we have pursued. The wise 
King of Israel left rules that commend both methods. 
General Butler has adopted one, and I adopted the other. 
We both have the sanction of scripture for our. course. 
Solomon says, "Answer not a fool according to his folly, 
lest thou also be like unto him." Well, I shrunk from 
that positively, and so did not answer. But in the next 
verse Solomon says, ^^ Answer a fool according to his 
folly, lest he appear wise in his own conceit." General 
Butler has followed this last advice, and taken the con- 
ceit out of them. (Applause.) I don't know which is 
the b^st way. I don't believe both ways united will 
ever annihilate the fools'of the Commonwealth. But let 
every man be fully persuaded in his own mind. I am 
perfectly satisfied with my experience, as I did not get 
into the State House. I hope General Butler will be 
equally satisfied, and get into the State House as a con- 
sequence of his method. 

But, gentlemen, this is a question that overrides all 
persons. If it had been merely a question whether Benj. 
F. Butler should be governor of Massachusetts, I should 
not be here to-day. For sincere as is my appreciation of 
the services he has rendered to the Nation and to the 
Commonwealth, and firm as is the friendship I bear him 
for all that he has done since the first shot of the great 
rebellion, yet even those considerations would not bring 
me here. If that were all, it would not be worth while 
for me to come here. Perhaps it would be better, at any 
rate, that I should stay away, for I am not sure that I 
shall make him a single friend. But to my idea this 
question overrides men, and the only interest which 
brings me here is because it overrides men. I thank 



8 



General Butler, and this is the reason why I am here to- 
day. As a citizen of the State, I thank him for giving 
ns an opportunity to fight this battle under his flag. And 
this is the battle which I mean. Gentlemen, the Repub- 
lican party is dead ; the only mistake is that it fancies it- 
self alive, and resists burial. As Edmund Burke said sev- 
enty years ago, there is many a man walking this earth, 
who supposes himself to be alive. So the Republican 
pai'ty supposes itself to be alive and denies its grave- 
clothes. It is a mill without any grist. The party has 
nothing to do and proposes nothing. It has achieved all 
it was organized to achieve. It is no fault of the honor- 
able men whose names have been put before the public 
as candidates, that they represent nothing. 

The party they lead " lags superfluous on the stage." 
This great country, its material interests presenting new 
questions every hour, — rocking with social convulsions, — 
teeming with men and forces that struggle for a place to 
mould the age and benefit the world, — such a country is 
no cabinet chamber where laurelled men scramble for 
office. It is the field where the tools ever offer them- 
selves to him who can use them ; and where, through 
respected and accepted men, or over them, the work of 
the hour must be done. 

Active and able to-day pushes aside laggard yester^ay^ 
who finds nothing to do but recounting what he did last 
week. 

In 1844, 1856 and 1861, who needed to go far to find 
what the Republican party planned ? Every man who 
hated slavery loved it, every man who loved slavery 
hated it. But slavery is dead. We have not only abol- 
ished slavery, but we have abolished the negro. We 
have actually washed color out of the Constitution. Lin- 



9 



coin abolished sLavery, and the fifteenth amendment abol- 
ished the negro. In law he is as white as you are. There 
is nothing for that party to do. It does not propose to 
do anything. It is contented to hold ofilce, to reap the 
harvest and to enjoy the honors of its history. If you 
narrowly watch it, you will find that the leading Repub- 
lican men are settling down into the mood of the old 
Whig party in 1856. It was a worthy party. I am not 
here to criticise the lifetime of the Whig party ; it was a 
respectable party and did its duty; the difliculty was 
that it tried to sit in state when it ought to have been 
buried. That is the trouble with all parties. They linger 
bn the staore long after we need them. Although " the 
brains are out, the party won't die." In that stage of 
alFairs such a man as Butler is flung, forced iip to repre- 
sent a new idea. We protected the Mack laborer, and 
now we are going to protect the laborer. North and 
South ; labor everywhere. Gentlemen, the question for 
the next ten years is the relation of labor to capital. 
That is called the workingman's party. All of you prob- 
ably own farms. Many of you employ laborers or keep 
shops. You think, when I have stated the question so, 
that I mean the question between the man that earns 
two dollars a day and the man who earns sixty millions ; 
that is not the qi\estion. The meaning of the labor ques- 
tion in Europe and in this country is this : Whether you 
on these acres, on yonder waves, or in the mills shall 
work honestly, industriously, soberly, for seventy long 
years, and then die worth a thousand or two thousand 
dollars, a small house, forty acres of land, or nothing, 
while some financial sponge sucks up millions. Do you 
know that out of one hundred men, the record is that 
there are not more than seven that leave any estate to be 



10 



administered. Seven out of a hundred. What has be- 
come of the rest ? Why, some of them lie in drunkards' 
graves. I don't pity them. Some of them were born 
fools and did not amount to anything from the begin- 
ning ; there is no need of concerning ourselves about 
them. Why, here are a hundred babies born to-day. 
Seventy years hence ten of them will lie in drunkards' 
graves, ten more will have turned out half-baked men, 
not able to make their own bread ; ten more will be 
worth a decent competency ; ten more will be worth 
from ten to fifty millions ; and of the sixty left, nearly all 
of them will beg of their neighbors, each moi-ning, leave 
to toil. Now, what I say is, I find no fault that Vander? 
bilt is worth fifty millions of dollars ; I find no fault that 
Stewart is worth one hundred millions of dollars. What 
I say is this : that this system of finance by which one 
man at sixty years old has gathered fifty millions of dol- 
lars, and of the ten thousand men that work for him, 
seven thousand get up every morning not knowing where 
dinner is coming from, — that system of finance belongs 
to the bottomless pit, and the sooner it goes home the 
better. 

The system is unjust, cruel and fatal to any true re- 
public. The safety of our institutions, justice and Chris- 
tianity dictate that out of the common profits, capital 
should have less and labor should have more than it now 
does. I do not blame anybody ; but I am detemiined, as 
far as I am concerned, that the brains of this generation 
shall try to tear that system open and let the light into 
it, and the readiest way I know is by political action. 
Do you want to get all these college men and statesmen 
to turn their attention to any matter ? Carry it into poli- 
tics. Do you want to set all the newspapers to talking 



11 



about labor ? Don't go on your knees or into the editor's 
office and ask him if he will or no. Do not be fooled 
into writing an article and paying a hundred dollars for 
printing. It is money thrown away. 

But when the month of October comes, nominate a ;• 
man that represents this problem ; give him from twenty 
to seventy thousand votes majority, and every man in 
the Commonwealth, from Barnstable to Berkshire, will 
eat, drink, sleep, dream and write nothing but labor from 
the next January to the next December. Brains rule 
this Commonwealth ; and HeaA^en pity us if the day ever 
comes when brains do not rule it. They ought to rule it. 
A just cause, a well-grounded complaint, and a hundred 
patient, earnest men, will capture, at last, the brains and 
hearts of the age. 

What, then, is General Butler's offence ? This is his 
offence. He revealed the dry-rot of the Republican 
party. Ithuriel-like, he called the roll of his party on 
its own camping ground — man — and immediately every 
sword turned on him, betrayed the secret that its leaders 
were planning to make it only a brotherhood of office- 
holders and a tool of capital. 

But " such personality " — " see every journal an-aigning 
him" — yes, if it were not so I would not have given a 
sixpence for him. If I go into an orchard, wanting pears, 
I naturally go to the tree that has been the most pelted 
with brick-bats. If I get into the Commonwealth and 
want to know the man that represents the radical ideas 
of his time, give me the man that has made enemies by 
thousands every time that he has piit his foot down. I 
went into one of the burying grounds in the next county 
to this, and I read an epitaph, " Here lies a man who 
never had an enemy." ■ Well, I said to myself, then here 



12 



lies a man who never had an idea. If you find a man in 
politics of whom everybody speaks well, I will tell you 
that his soul is made up of soft-soap; he is a "mush of 
concession"; you cannot feel him in a dark night if you 
run against him. 

Now, the only reason Avhy General Butler has stirred 
these people and the press so much is, that every man 
who holds office or position here is contented with the 
present state of affiiirs. In response to his criticism they 
cry out, " Art thou come to disturb us before our time V " 
I have tried it for thirty years and I know where the 
pelting of the newspapers comes from. 

I have given thirty years of my life — and I i-ejoice to 
have been permitted to give them — to the redemption of 
a race. If I am spared another ten years, I hope I shall 
be permitted to give them to the re<lemption of every 
man who works with his hands. (Applause.) For, gentle- 
men, the great danger that threatens us in the future ia 
the money power. General Butler just addressed you 
on three great topics, and they are all very important 
points ; but the real question is, whether you will have a 
republic or whether you won't, I confess that I have 
studied democratic institutions for forty years, and I 
don't see, to-day, the means by which the independence 
of the legislature of Massachusetts is to be saved from 
the hands of its capital and corporations. There is no 
legislature in Pennsylvania. The set of men that go up 
to Ilarrisburg are bought and paid for by the Pennsyl- 
vania Central Railroad. " At the end of the late session, 
a member arose and said, " If Tom Scott has no more 
business for this legislature, I move we adjourn," You 
laugh, as though it was only true of Pennsylvaniii. Why, 
gentlemen, you have a legislature in Boston. You have 



13 



three railroad coinmissioners. They are to guard your 
railroads, in order that you may travel safely. There is a 
railroad that runs down to this point, and the president of 
the road has been laboring for one object for the last fifteen 
years — that is, to raise its stock from 45 to 120 ; and by 
his parsimony he has accomplished it, not spending a 
single dollar for your safety or comfort. While every 
other railroad in the United States has exhausted science 
in order to provide the means of safety, this railroad is 
running on the principle of the old stage-coaches fronr 
Portsmouth to Boston. 

Last winter the railroad commissioners suggested cer- 
tain needed reforms in the railroads of Massachusetts. 
They said, " The people are not safe ; " and the reply of 
the raih-oads was, "It will cost too much to make them 
so. If we make improvements, we cannot make a divi- 
dend." The reply of the commissioners was that "the 
first interest of a railroad Avas the safety of its passen- 
gers ; the second interest its dividends." " Now listen," 
said the railroad agents to your servants, the railroad 
commissioners, appointed by Governor Claflin, "if you 
don't hold off and shut your mouths and forbear pressing 
the necessity of this measure, we will abolish the Board 
of Commissioners." Thus you see which rules the State, 
your legislature or your moneyed corporations, with a 
capital of one hundred millions of dollars. 

Everybody knows that the laws of the State of New 
York are not made at Albany ; they are made in Van- 
derbilt's counting-room. Men count the thirty-seven 
States; but that is a great mistake. "We have thirty- 
six States and a railroad, — the Camden and Amboy. I 
warrant you, if you will go to Trenton when the legis- 
lature is sitting, you will find there just what I did. The 



14 



representatives there do not pretend to be anything but 
the servants of the Camden and Amboy. They have 
not even the presumption to pretend. They laugh in 
your face, and say, " My dear sir, of course you know we 
are only a railroad." Blessed souls ! they lack one vice, 
— hypocrisy. I know a State in the North-West, cob- 
webbed all over with one railroad. The only time I ever 
used a deadhead ticket in my life was given me in this 
State. I rode many miles, and it was always good. Came 
to a branch at last, and handed, shamefacedly, out the 
pass, saying, " That is not good here, is it?" " Oh, yes, 
that is good," was the reply, and I never could get any- 
where where it was not good. (Laughter.) What is 
the result? There is not a lawyer, merchant nor clergy- 
man in that whole State that dares to peep or mutter , 
till that railroad has pitched the time. 

The great' question of the future is money against 
legislation. My friends, you and I shall be in our graves 
long before that battle is ended ; and unless our children 
have more patience and courage than saved this country 
from slavery, republican institutions will go down before 
moneyed corporations. Rich men die, but banks are im- 
mortal, and railroad corporations never have any diseases. 
In the long run with the legislatures, they are ^ure to 
win. 

Now, this great battle which General Butler represents, 
is the battle of labor. And I came here to say that I 
hope General Butler will be governor, because he repre- 
sents that element of disturbance in the Republican 
party ; and the moment he don't represent it, the great 
labor element that clasps hands from Moscow to San 
Francisco will trample him under its feet. 

There is one thing that the masses of this country and 



15 



Europe are determined upon, and it is, that no future 
government shall be tested by the protection it gives to 
money, but to men. This question is a great deal riper 
in Europe than it is here, because the slave question has 
lately absorbed all the attention. It shook this country 
as God shook the four corners of the sheet in the Acts 
of the Apostles. Now that it is settled, this great ques- 
tion will now fill the arena. 

I have no enmity to the Republican party. It has 
done its work. I will weave its laurels as freely as any- 
body else ; no man shall find me second. No ; give the 
praise to Lincoln, and Andrew, and Sumner ; to any man 
whose name is bound up with the success of the great 
humane enterprise that glorifies this generation. What 
I ask of the Republican party is, to look ahead. I ask 
its elements, gradually falling asunder, that they shall 
coalesce on a new line, and in order to do this I welcome 
the movement of General Butler. 

Now, let me say a word about him. I wish to use no 
extravagant terms about him, but talk as I would if sit- 
ting at your tea-table to-night. It is very rare that you 
find one of the great leaders willing to risk his future by 
coming up and shaping his course according to a new 
idea. What does General Butler want of this disturb- 
ance in the Republican ranks ? Does any man in this 
crowd doubt that General Butler, with his abilities, which 
no man -will dispiite ; with his daring, which cannot be 
matched in New England ; with his proud record, that 
if he only waited he would take his seat in the National 
Senate, whenever the next vacancy occurred ? We all 
know he would. I know a little of what a lawyer's 
ideas must be, and there is only one hour of his life that, 
as far as self-satisfaction is concerned, I envy General 



16 

Butler. I am willing the woilcl should weave into his 
chaj)let the fine historical word " contraband," which he 
coined during the rebellion. I am willing that he should 
stand on the list of major-generals as the only great, 
eflicient statesman Avho, when one half the country- 
rebelled against the other half, actually hung a traitor. 
Oh ! history will need its keenest ])en when it comes to 
record the fact that a dozen millions of people rebelled 
and took up arms against their own government, and 
that one great iron right hand alone dared to hang a 
traitor to a gibbet in the fiice of the sun. I am willing 
he should have that fame ; willing he should go do.wn 
to history as the only man of the Northern army who 
seemed capable of holding New Orleans, Let me tell 
you, gentlemen, you that own United States bonds, that 
your securities advanced rapidly and the world believed 
in the North when this successful soldier went down to 
New Orleans, the second city in the Confederacy, took 
it captive and held it in his remorseless right hand. 

But, as I said, there has been one hour that I envy 
General Butler. It was Avhen Johnson Avas impeached. 
When, before the Senate of the United States, the trai- 
tor })resident was arraigned, he summoned to his side 
four or five of the ablest lawyers of the United States ; 
they were names that every lawyer knows as leading the 
bar. But do you remember that on one occasion General 
Butler made an objection to their course of procedure, 
so fresh, so cogent, so unanswerable, that these five first- 
class lawyers sat down dumb and remained seated nigh 
half an hour in counsel to know by what ingenuity of 
wit, by what subtlety of law, they might be able to push 
back his assault. That half hour of lawyers' confusion is 
the most glorious leaf of his laurels. Had I remained at 



17 



the bar I would have swapped New Orleans and Mum- 
ford for that one proud half-hour in the Senate of the 
United States. Now, gentlemen, does any one here sup- 
pose that a man so ready, so efficient, so mature, and of 
energy so untiring, is to be set back in his career ? Has 
he no temptation to bide patiently his time ? You all 
know this. If any of you need proof of his loyalty to 
the Republican party, you can find it in just this move- 
ment this fall. The party recognize that its Judge has 
come. It must either crystallize around a new depart- 
ure or it must give up its hold on Massachusetts. He 
aims to save his party by reorganizing it. My interest in 
this election is not because I think it will give a victory 
to the Democratic party. I believe that the Republican 
party ought to hold the United States for the next eight 
years, but it never can hold it, and under God it never 
ought to hold it, and, as I am a Christian man, I hope it 
never will hold it, unless the party embraces these new 
issues. Gentlemen, I am very frank to say that I don't 
want that convention at Worcester merely to nominate 
General Butler ; that will not satisfy me. You need not 
tell these reporters what I say, but between you and me 
I very little doubt that they will nominate him. That 
will not satisfy me. Neither will it satisfy me if General 
Butler's friends go there and put a small plank labelled 
"labor" in one part of the platform. I want king's post 
and girder, — wall-plate and ridge-pole, every plank and 
joist carved, moulded, stamped and labelled "Justice to 
Man " — " Man first — Monet, the week after." 

But, remember, there is no antagonism between Man 
and Money — between Capital and Labor ; they are friends, 
not foes ; partners, not competitors ; they are the two 
parts of one scissors — each useless without the other. 



18 



Whatever harms or helps one, must, on any just system, 
harm or help the other. 

I demand that the men who have lifted unpaid labor 
into the ranks of paid labor shall now spread their pro- 
tecting influence over all labor, white and black, from the 
Lakes down to the Gulf. Then we shall have a new era, 
in which we will cut the hamstrings of capital, under- 
mine the tyranny of corporations, and restore legisla- 
tures to their independence. We fight to unchain legis- 
latures. Gentlemen, this is not my battle. I see many 
a man here as old as I am. It is not his battle. We 
have done our duty. We have fought one battle that 
made the land rock. We have held this nation together 
when the earthquake almost snapped its bonds. But I 
can tell you, without any reference to this election, with- 
out any relation to General Butler or his enemies, you 
men of forty, you have a keener battle to fight ; you have 
a harder thirty years to face than we faced. Look at the 
city of New York. Why, it is to-day the private prop- 
erty of a dozen millionaires. There are some men in the 
city of New York that own it as much as the man who 
liolds the title owns this hotel. There is no more repub- 
lican or democratic liberty in the State of New York 
than there is in Constantinople. Boston is treading the 
same path. Those men in Tammany will tell you that 
you cannot put a legislature at Albany that they cannot 
buy. There are no men in the State that we cannot 
purchase. I tell you, gentlemen, the legislature at Bos- 
ton is in the same line. I would like to see you choose 
a legislature that can stand up against the Hoosac Tun- 
nel, the Boston and Albany, and the Boston, Hartford 
aud Erie when they combine. I would like to find a 
man outside the Worcester Insane Asylum who believes, 



19 



even when he ia asleep, that the legislature of Massachu- 
setts has got courage enough to do anything which the 
national banks of this Commonwealth forbid. In my 
mind's eye I see all of you, children of republican fath- 
ers, of men that voted for the Constitution of the United 
States, you all come up here and think you are free men. 
My dear friends, there is not one of you that has not a 
national bank bill pasted over your mouth. (A voice, 
"I haint.") Well, that only shows that he has got 
three — one over his eyes, another over his ears, and the 
third over his mouth. No man who can spare the time 
to go into our legislature but miist sensibly feel the 
influence of capital inside its ranks. 

I hope to leave some seed in Essex County. The Phil- 
lipses lived at Andover and Salem, and so I have a right 
to a word here. Besides that, I am almost the only man 
in Massachusetts to-day who rejoices in the old Federalist 
party, the Essex Junta. I will tell you why I rejoice in 
it. It is because they were the only party that, as early 
as 1810, found out that the slave power ruled this nation. 
(A voice, "I am one of them,") Give me your hand, 
twin. That party went down. I am glad it did. It 
went down because it did not believe in the people. 
Alexander Hamilton was the greatest intellect God ever 
gave to this nation ; but Thomas Jefferson served his 
time infinitely better, because he saw farther ahead. He 
trusted the people. The reason why we want Butler put 
into the chair is, because it will teach the Republican 
party what instruction lingers in the hearts of the people. 
Our main object is to make the law of this nation just 
and impartial. Instead of that, the party falls into a con- 
tented, sluggish indifference, — into the quiet, oflicc-hold- 



20 



ing fatness of the old Whig party. It needs disturbing ; 
it needs a stoiin. 

"When Lincoln came to you in '63, lie said to you, 
"I am going to abolish slavery." Andrew came for your 
suffrages, and said, "I am going to save the nation." 
When the Republican party came to you, in '68, they 
said, "We are going to elect Grant;" but let any man 
in this crowd tell me what does the Republican party 
now promise to do. Grant has a Ku-klux bill, with which 
he can strangle the South if he wants to ; we have jus- 
tice incorporated into our Constitution. Does the party 
say, "Here are men that seem to be unjustly burdened; 
we may relieve them"? Not a bit of it. Go to the 
president of a college, the chairman of a railroad commit- 
tee, or to an agent of a corporation, and they will tell 
you that we workingmen are a set of ignoramuses, that 
do not know when we are well off. Do they profess that 
they will undex'take to hold up the independence of legis- 
latures against corporations ? Do they say they will no 
longer bribe the great railroads of the West with un- 
counted acres of the people's land ? Do they say, " We 
will endeavor to fortify the public against the corruption 
of the age" ? Not a bit of it. Drunkenness is a crime; 
intemperance is a terrible evil ; but how do ten mil- 
lionaires hold the city of New York ? I will tell you. 
They work only through a thousand men, their agents, 
every one of whom ought to be hung. (Voices, " That 
is so.") They have committed crimes enough already. 
When election day comes,^these ten men say to their 
subalterns, "Do you go down to the polling booth, and 
vote early and often. Make the place so unsafe that no 
peaceable man will want to appear to vote." "But," 
says a man, " if I do so I shall be sent to Sing Sing." 



21 



They reply, " Do what I tell you, and you are safe ; re- 
fuse to commit the crime I command, and I will hang 
you for what you have already done." And every one of 
them has committed a capital oflence. Do you suppose 
they get sober men ? Do you think they would come to 
you farmers here, if living in New York? No; that 
man has to take his hungry follower down to the corner 
grog-shop, kept by an aldei'man, and there stifle that 
man's conscience before he can be induced to vote. Gen- 
tlemen, do you know that I tell you the truth when I tell 
you that there is not a city in the United States that is 
not governed by a mob ? Do you know that I tell you 
the truth when I tell you that the system of universal 
suffrage, so far as it is carried out in great cities, is a great 
failure, and that the city of Boston, with all its universal 
suffrage, has not had a mayor and aldermen for twenty 
years that was not nominated by a committee chosen by 
its gi'og-shops ? But it is only truth that I tell you, and 
I tell it with all the seriousness with which I make a 
prayer, that unless some way is found to curb intemper- 
ance, the idea of governing a nation on the principle of 
universal suffrage is a failure. Now, does the Republican 
party promise anything about intemperance ? 

But people say. General Butler is not a temperance 
man ; I know that. General Butler drinks his cham- 
pagne ; I know that. Governor Claflin does not ; I know 
that. I have been a teetotaler for thirty-four years, and 
it is a cause nearest my heart. It is a cause most vital 
to the safety of a republic. Yet I had rather, twice 
rather, that General Butler should be governor of the 
State, with his champagne in his right hand, than Gov- 
ernor Claflin, a teetotaler ; and I will tell you why. I had 
rather have a wine-drinker that will execute the Maine 



22 



law than a sober man that does not execute it. I had 
rather have a man that looks in my face and says, " I 
shall drink Madeira, but if you have that statute which 
forbids the Parker and Tremont Houses from sell- 
ing, I will inexorably execute it." I had rather have 
hira than a prohibitionist like Governor Claflin, whose 
friends claim that he executes the law in a reasonable 
way. What is that reasonable way? I will tell you. 
It is to pick up some petty vendor down on North Street, 
that has two gallons of whiskey hidden in her back 
room, and then piit on double-refined black spectacles 
and walk by the Parker House. Now, gentlemen, that 
sort of 'a sensible way of executing the law I don't like. 
I am not that sort of sensible man at all. Give me a 
man, no matter what his private habits, who will shut 
up every grog-shop in Boston, and I will risk the future. 
But men say, Don't you temperance men know that if 
this is done the prohibitory law will be swept from the 
statute book ? Thank you ; I will risk it. I want every 
law on the statute book executed, or swept off. Just 
give me no law on the statute book and I will make the 
county of Essex quake with temperance speeches ; but 
while you shut my mouth with a temperance law, and I 
go to the governor and he says we must be satisfied with 
a sensible execution of the law, it is a checkmate. I 
would like a prohibitionist. I would rather have Pit- 
man than Butler. I would rather have a temperance 
man. I have said that many times within the last ten 
years. I have said to my temperance friends, " If you 
ever expect to make yourselves felt, you must do it at 
the polls." But the fact is, you cannot stir that dish of 
skim-milk to any honorable action. We have tried it 
again and again. I have tried, inside and outside of 



23 



the convention, but could do nothing either way. And 
now, all at once, there rises up a man before you who 
says, " Give me the helm of state and I will close every 
liquor shop in Boston, and my motive shall be to kill the 
prohibitory law." Thank you, sir. I will risk it. Just 
go ahead and execute. 

But people say, " Suppose he don't execute ; suppose he 
don't keep his promises ? " Friends, there is one thing 
that I would like to say here. Look at the journalism 
of the last six weeks. I think General Butler has been 
charged with about every sin that can be imagined ; but 
there is one thing, I watched very carefully, — I put my 
ear down to the earth like an Indian listening, — he 
never has been charged, even since 1861, of not doing 
what he said he would do. You cannot find a news- 
paper correspondent so utterly reckless that he will 
charge Butler with- having broken his promise. 

For one, I have nothing against him. He has done a 
great many things that I should not have done ; he has 
done a great many things that I would ask him to do 
difierently ; but I will tell you a secret, friends. If I was 
Pope to-day, there is not a man among all the candi- 
dates, Butler included, whom I would make a saint of; 
not one. If I was Pope to-morrow, there has not been 
a governor for fifty years that I would make a saint of. 
The difficulty is, saints do not come very often, and 
when they do come, it is the hardest thing in the world 
to get them into politics. I don't believe that if you 
could import a saint bran new and spotless from heaven, 
that he could get a majority in the State of Massachu- 
setts for any office that has a salary. 

And now I say, that this name that we present to you 
to-day, stands as high, as illustrious, as honored, and aa 



24 



historical, represents as raiich ability and as much will 
to work as any one that has been named for governor ; 
and I for one, if I liear in November, as I hope to hear, 
that from Barnstable to Berkshire the peojile of the 
Commonwealth have strangled the press with one hand 
and the moneyed corporations with the other, and 
made Benjamin F. Butler governor of Massachusetts, I 
shall say, ."Amen, so be it." 

" "No more strikes. A hundred guns for 
the People, who furl the flags of disorder 
and discontent in the streets to take their 
place in the cabinet and at the council board." 






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